The last few weeks, we spent some time looking at the history of professional baseball in Canada.
In particular, we looked at the first Canadian MLB franchise, the Montreal Expos. I always knew that they never quite put together a winning team and lost the support of their owners. But I never knew that only a few seasons before relocating to Washington, D.C. they had a very strong team and were among the top teams of the MLB before the season was canceled due to a player strike.
Next, we looked at the history and development of Canada’s only remaining MLB franchise, the Toronto Blue Jays. Since the Blue Jays are my favourite team, my prior knowledge of their history was quite extensive. Although, I will say that it was quite interesting reading about their inauguration and the amount of time it took to develop a winning team that would go on to win back-to-back World Series Championships.
During the final two weeks of my blog, I thought it could be interesting to look at how the game of baseball has developed recently. Before the beginning of last season, February 2023, the MLB announced that new rules would be coming to the league.
These new rules included:
- A timer in between pitches to speed up the game.
- A restriction of defensive shifts to allow more hits.
- Larger bases for player safety and to create more offense.
https://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-2023-rule-changes-pitch-timer-larger-bases-shifts
Next week I will take a more in-depth look at the rule changes and consider how they affected the game this past season.